THE GREAT ENIGMA.* MB. LILLY writes under special circumstances for
a particular public. Although now of the Roman Communion, in this volume he speaks merely as the Christian apologist against the outer world of cultivation : such a world as is represented by the Prince in Mr. Shorthouse's allegory of the Little School- master Mark. The apologist asks to be allowed to place the issue before numerous readers of cultivated but " hazy intel- lects," who, with smile or sigh, absorb for a day or two any magazine theology, and reproduce it as original thought for the delectation of a dinner-table. Such pupils are not hopeful. They do not mind looking upon themselves as rats quitting a sinking ship ; we can only bid them consider whether it is quite wise even for rats to try to harry the scuttling in mid- ocean. The fashionable craze of gossip on the creeds may have more serious consequences than some imagine ; but its * Tho Groat Enigma. By W. B. Lilly. London I John Murray. 1892. votaries are not likely to wish to take practical action in the solving of the Great Enigma. Unfortunately,—in religious matters only,—those who have no weight have much influence. Yet nothing can be done with them except to show the tendency of their treatment of religious problems.
But there is another type in the cultivated yet hazy world, " practically outside the Christian pale," to whom Mr. Lilly addresses the argument of his present work. There is a very High Example of answering with silence, or merely putting counter-questions to, persons vain, captious, or insincere ; but all questioners are not insincere. They are willing to take the consequences of being convinced, and, to some amongst them, a first step is taken when they are able to see how it is not quite impossible that a creed of love and of purity, growing out of relations with a Living Being, may be as rational as a creed asserting our dependence on some infinite but unconscious Existence, to which we may, or may not, have more or less ascertainable duties. Probably none were ever converted by literary, philosophical, or even historical statements, as regards Christianity; but some are afraid to merge their lives in what is attractive, although it may be a delusion. Yet they cannot ignore the Great Enigma. Does Christianity give any answer to it ? is their problem of problems. To know whether Christianity holds the solution or not—is Christianity effete, or is Christ alive ?—that is the point. Mr. Lilly observes of these inquirers :— " It is of no avail to say to them, with a vigorous disputant of the present day A. man who cannot occupy his mind with love, friendship, science, literature, art, politics, trade, and a thousand other matters, must be a poor kind of creature.' . . . . . They feel that the exact contrary is true ; they feel that a man who can wholly occupy his mind with such things—even though he put money in his purse thereby—must be ' a poor kind of creature,' because precisely in proportion to an eleva- tion in the scale of being is our inability to appease with finite husks the infinite hunger that is in us."
For such minds, Mr. Lilly practically retraces his own path to the "chapel in the Infinite" which he has found. He points out the teachings of the modern schools. At least,' he seems to say, you may observe that by accepting those guides you arrive at no end.' We think be does well to begin with an account of the school of teaching which least directly affects the cultivated doubter, but with which it is essential he should have definite acquaintance.
No wise apologist would ever press the argument for Christianity on the ground of its convenient restraints for other people. An appeal to self-interest alienates more fine spirits than it attracts, and Christian reverence for the Ten Commandments, or inspiration derived from the Beatitudes, cannot be directly correlated with perception of their values as codes of limitation on others. It is a matter of experience with some that even in this world there is a feeling of perfect trust in friendship which exists only between those mutually conscious of endeavours to obey laws which permit no wrong, and which have as object absolute perfection. But if such a code be deliberately put upon an insincere basis, as trading upon our appreciation of the leverage of Christianity on a Christian, then, even if it could exist, this trust is not for sincere men.
The better class of doubters would repudiate the argument from convenience, except, perhaps, as regards the young and the uneducated. They had better be left alone,—all our culti- vated doubters agree on that point.
But it is precisely the young and uneducated whom Atheism will not leave alone. The consequences of its propaganda are so very serious in practice that no man with brains is justified in letting the question go by default, or in looking upon its workings, with M. Renan, as a curious experience for humanity. If we are to suffer from what Swift has called the incon- veniences of abolishing Christianity, let us go with our eyes open to meet them. Our hazy dilettanti would do well to see whether they are prepared for teaching which may startle them by its ignorance of the past, and fill them with appre- hension for the future. Mr. Lilly's first task is to show in barest outline the positive commandments and active ability of those who " are training the coming generation to believe that the answer to the Great Enigma is not moral but material." We said a few weeks ago that greater and greater would be the coming differences between the Secular and Christian socialism of the future; but we have not yet seen in Eng- land any fight between the Atheistic and the Christian politician on the same level of power. Yet, as this must be the result of our present progress, it is right to see what side we prefer. Even from extracts made or indicated by Mr. Lilly, some will better understand the really atheistic aims. It is sufficient to sketch these to repel the doubting man of cultivation and of honour. But if his own views be of no consequence, has he a logical reason for repulsion from the statements of the Cateehisme du Libre-Penseur ? More im- portantly—since logic counts for little with most of us—will he not suddenly find that he has let his opportunity slip, and that his protests as to good taste have become ineffectual ?
Setting aside the atheistic propaganda, Mr. Lilly turns to the popular intellectual influence of Agnosticism, and finds that " M. Renan's critical agnosticism is practically as fatal to duty as the most dogmatic atheism." Now, although M. Renan is essentially a thinker pour sentir, all estimate of the slightness of his argument is often as personal and as in- stantaneous as perception of the grace of his style. It is otherwise when we arrive at Mr. Spencer's scientific agnosti- cism, and have to meet a very different teacher, with appeal to brain rather than to fancy. Mr. Lilly says :- " The truth is, that to the whole Utilitarian school, in which Mr. Spencer must assuredly be classed, the facts of our moral con- sciousness present quite insuperable difficulties. Bentham pro- posed to get rid of those difficulties by the simple method of banishing the word ought from the vocabulary of morals, and by ceasing to talk about duties. Mr. Spencer, less boldly, endea- voured to explain away the ethical sense, in deriving it from the instincts of selfishness, sympathy, imitation, disciplined by the experiences of tho countless generations who have bequeathed to us their slowly-developed nervous organisation. Such are the unmoral factors from which he seeks to evolve the commanding
sanctity of Right, the stern benignity of Duty There is a whole universe between the feelings of the indispensableness of the means, if we would attain the end, and the feeling that obedience to the voice within is itself the end, to be followed in the scorn of consequence."
Mr. Lilly examines Mr. Spencer's doctrines of Causation, of the Relativity of Knowledge, and of the Unknowable, and his fine and interesting argument is worth attention. He asserts that Mr. Spencer's "philosophy is but a gigantic attempt to explain the real, the living, by mechanism," but it fails ; and, " if the intellect is valid, the true conclusion can never be Atheism or Agnosticism, but must be either Theism or some higher form of Pantheism, which is really, in good logic, a kind of Atheism."
It is not unnatural to consider here the objections which the cultivated modern mind must feel when arguing with persons whose concrete and corporeal notions of spiritual life are equally inconceivable, and, in dealing with such difficul- ties, Mr. Lilly tells the apologue of Moses and the shepherd. The tale goes that when Moses checked the man for his anthropomorphism, the poor shepherd could no longer pray to the God whom he had hitherto adored, and, after a while, " God spake unto Moses, and said, Why hest thou driven my servant away from me ? What is evil in thee is good in another." And thus we are led to the argument from the inner life. How it can be possible for man to receive truth is one problem, and how his moral sense can be satisfied by a world which is full of pain is another ; and thus these considerations further cause the thinker to examine what the mystics may have to say for themselves. Undoubtedly, their answers have more to offer the intelligence than those solu- tions of the World's Riddle heretofore described. But, after all, Mr. Lilly shows that the issue is now between Christianity and no religion—(we simply could not return to the other religions of antiquity)—and for his public he endeavours to prove that " there is nothing irrational, and therefore im- moral, in accepting the Christian synthesis as affording the best answer to the Great Enigma."
Such is an outline of this brilliant apology by a clever writer. How far it will appeal to its desired public it is im- possible to say. But it may serve a useful purpose in showing the real issues at stake, and in warning dilettante theologians that they are behaving foolishly. An English youth, in a Southern pine-forest, for mere idleness, once applied a match to a thicket of light reeds, but almost before he had time to be amused at the roar, the neighbouring trees had caught the blaze. He never meant much when he set on fire the pine wood. Mr. Lilly's book may warn us that there are some questions with which it is not well to beguile an idle hour.
Yet in the last chapter, after the serious examination of the negatives is over, we wish that Mr. Lilly had seen his way to another conclusion. Whether it be from the conditions of the apology, or from the idiosyncracy of the apologist, we do not know; but something is lacking, and we believe it to be a serious omission, on propagandist grounds. We follow with intellectual assent the steps by which we are brought to his conclusion that, despite contrary teachings, if we please, we may be Christians. There Mr. Lilly stops. Would it not have been possible to append a word from the experience of those who have felt that they must be Christians P Surely, this would not have been out of place in an. appeal on behalf of rational Christianity ? Intellectual arguments usually fail —they fail, even "with those inside the Christian pale,"—in many a combat for many a one, albeit, "in moments when he knows he cannot die." But there is a witness (not of a few, nor of those of one type, nor of one race,) which seems to give as much assurance of the existence of the Greater Life without, as of the lesser life within, each being. Nor is this only the witness of history. It is the witness of our con- temporaries, perhaps of our personal friends. We have spoken already of the trust felt between those who equally have given themselves to that which is greater and dearer than the friendship inseparable from their earthly lives. In such relations, it is sometimes possible to know the innermost personal conviction of another soul. One, who had felt its influence, lately spoke of the intense power exercised by another mind which had passed through most fiery trials, and had seemed to come out of these trials as if purified of all earthly longings. With advantage, Mr. Lilly thus might have completed his appeal. When the mind is too tired to follow arguments, the spirit absorbs the force of the personal certainties of men and women who have not served God for nought, but who are willing to trust Him in the pain and the dark, even for those they love ; for, as one has said:—" I do not think—I know—that God is good, and that in the willing acceptance of His will is absolute peace." It is they who have solved the Great Enigma " Tranquillus Deus, tranquillat omnia, et quietum aspicere quiscere est."
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